ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



and Mersey,' was wrested from Northumbria by Edward the Elder or 

 Athelstan, attached to Mercia and transferred from the diocese of York to 

 the Mercian diocese of Lichfield. The lands beyond the Ribble continued 

 to be a dependency of Northumbria, and in the obedience of York. The 

 ecclesiastical change thus effected was destined to be more lasting than the 

 civil one, for the Ribble remained an ecclesiastical frontier down to the 

 Reformation, when the districts which had long been united for civil pur- 

 poses in the county of Lancaster were brought together for ecclesiastical 

 purposes in Henry VIII's new diocese of Chester. 



A few years later we seem to get a little light upon the district north of 

 the Ribble. According to a charter entered in the York Registers, Athel- 

 stan, who annexed Northumbria in 927, granted the whole region of Amoun- 

 derness to the cathedral church of St. Peter, York, in perpetuity.^' The 

 king asserts that he had bought it with a large sum of his own money, but 

 does not say from whom. The omission is supplied by the twelfth-century 

 * Lives of the Archbishops of York,' ^* in which it • is stated that Athelstan 

 purchased it a paganis, i.e. from the Northmen to whom the district owed the 

 name it now bore. A grant that depended upon a bargain which subsequent 

 pagan invaders might not consider binding upon them was clearly so pre- 

 carious that the absence of any further trace of St. Peter's ownership of 

 Amounderness need not force us to question the genuineness of Athelstan's 

 gift, although his charter is not without its difficulties.^^ Just before the 

 Norman Conquest Amounderness was in the possession of Tostig, earl of 

 Northumbria.'^ 



These meagre and ambiguous notices exhaust the information yielded by 

 Anglo-Saxon sources as to the ecclesiastical state of the remote and backward 

 region with which we are concerned. With the advent of the Normans 

 more light is forthcoming, though it is still far less abundant than could be 

 wished. 



There is a strong probability that a fair proportion of the parishes into 

 which Lancashire was divided during the later Middle Ages had already been 

 marked out before the Conquest, while there was as yet no county of Lan- 

 caster." Only seventeen or eighteen indeed are named or implied in Domes- 

 day ; but the Conqueror's geld-book is notoriously erratic in its mention of 



"^ Historians ofCh. of York (Rolls Ser.), iii, i, and (without the boundaries) Kemble, Cod. Dipl. No. 352 ; 

 Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 703. Can the place-name Bispham, which in the eleventh century was Biscopham, be 

 brought into connexion with this grant or with the earlier one to Wilfrid ? 



" Hist. ofCh. of York, ii, 239. 



" It professes to be granted on 7 June, in 930, in the sixth year of Athelstan, at Nottingham, but the in- 

 diction, epact and concurrent given are those of 934, to which year Birch suggests that it should be trans- 

 ferred ; the more so because its general clauses are exactly those of Athelstan's charter to Aelfwold granted at 

 Winchester 28 May, 934 ; Birch, No. 702. If it really belongs to 934 Birch must be wrong in attributing 

 Athelstan's London charter to St. Mary's, Worcester {Cart. Sax. No. 701) to this year, for it has exactly the 

 same dating, down to the day of the month, as that we are discussing. A further result of the adoption of the 

 later date would be to put the appointment of Wulfstan as archbishop of York, which appears from the charter 

 to have been concurrent with or only slightly prior to the grant of Amounderness, four years later than has 

 been usually supposed. The original charter is unfortunately not producible. 



" Dom. Bk. i, 301^. 



" The county boundaries as ultimately settled did not everywhere coincide with parish boundaries. In 

 Lonsdale, where the county boundary was drawn after the Conquest, Dalton township was left in the parish 

 of Burton in Kendal, and Ireby in the Yorkshire parish of Thornton. The limits of Amounderness and 

 ' Between Ribble and Mersey ' were fixed before the Conquest, but Aighton in Amounderness was after- 

 wards placed in the Yorkshire parish of Mitton, while the parish of Whalley included parts of Bowland and 

 that of Rochdale Saddleworth, both in Yorkshire. 



